Policy and Complex Systems
Figure 5 . Barriers and enablers for rural school .
Figure 6 . Barriers and enablers for suburban school .
One significant attribute that has a different effect in the two schools is “ teacher turnover rate .” This attribute has negative impact on the overall fitness in Rural School , but a positive impact on overall fitness in Suburban School ( highlighted in Figures 5 and 6 ). This is a counterintuitive insight ; logically , one would expect that the loss of resources invested in the teachers in a school would have a negative outcome on an intervention . In Suburban School , however , the culture attributes of the teachers are steadily declining because of the administration attributes and the environment . Therefore , the introduction of a new teacher potentially increases these attributes , if it is assumed that the new teachers would have comparable attribute levels to the original teachers at the start of the intervention .
These results did not align with the expectations of the research team at the beginning of the grant ; without rigorous analysis of external trends and model-based thinking about attributes like turnover of teachers and administrators , Rural School seemed like a high-risk environment , while Suburban School seemed ideal . The end
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